Car dealership waiting rooms are their own special kind of hell…I mean, liminal space. Bad coffee, cheap snacks, yesterday’s physical newspaper, and a TV blaring whatever channel whoever last had the remote left on. (side note: I cannot recommend this device highly enough for anyone who spends any amount of time in these types of shared spaces)
There are even cliques in this liminal space. The porters, who I once overheard being called ‘lot jockeys,’ only come through in pairs or threesomes to get some of that crappy coffee. They chuckle at each other’s jokes while simultaneously scrolling through…something on their phones while they wait for that caffeine fix.
Then there are the sales folks. They generally either pass through on the way to the restrooms, or they lead in a prospect to wow them with the free coffee and snacks while they’re waiting on paperwork from ‘upstairs.’
Next up are the office workers from that mythical land of ‘upstairs.’ This group is really two distinct sub-cliques: the money people and the support staff—and never the twain shall meet. They’re either rushing through for a quick cup, a refill of their water bottle, or again, the restrooms. Oh, and the support staff are almost always in pairs and quite often still have their phone headsets on, as if to highlight the transient nature of this space.
And lastly, we have the actual customers. These strangely shambolic creatures are the oddest, yet also the most fascinating to inhabit the space. More often than not, they’re entranced by their phone and not even looking at the seating area options. They point their backsides in the general direction of the nearest seating surface and come in for a landing, never taking their eyes off their phones.
The next largest subgroup are those who planned ahead and brought their work with them. In today’s work-from-anywhere culture, these can be difficult to differentiate from those who want you to think they’re working, when in reality they’re scrolling Reddit. The laptops often have identical stickers, and as they also tend to have headphones on, unless you overhear them clearly on a work Zoom, it’s a crapshoot.
And the final minuscule subgroup are the folks, like the guy across the room from me as I write this, who are actively engaged with their surroundings. No screen to distract. No headphones to drown out. Watching the show that is life. I know that sounds trite, but it provides a welcome break from the constant stream of nonsense we’re constantly inundated with day in, day out.
You ever try just watching the world? Sure, some people will look at you funny, like the young guy who just looked up and the gentleman across the room with a quizzical look on his face, as if to say “how are you not bored?” Ironically, it’s this young guy who seems bored, he’s switched between his phone and laptop screen roughly every 15 seconds since he sat down.
To clarify, I’m taking notes in a notebook as I write these thoughts down. I’ll type it up later when I get home. I find it much easier to watch the world with a pen in my hand than a screen in front of my face.
What makes this a liminal space, you ask? Liminal spaces are defined by the fleeting nature of our time spend there. By the fact that they’re neither here, nor there. This waiting room occupies a space in between our personal space in the form of the cars we all brought in for work of some sort (oil change in my case) and the public realm outside the front door, in the form of Market St. in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle. It’s not private, we’re sharing it with strangers—neither is it public, as you have to be a customer to use the facilities or drink the coffee.
And that’s also what makes it such an ideal a place to sit and watch the interactions.